Friday, July 17, 2009

A Crop Away

I'm heading down to Florida to spend a week with family. I have two Basic Gray Chocolate Chipboard albums and I pulled paper and embellishments from my Club Scrap stash. (Body and Soul) I've selected stamps, ribbons and what not. Since we are driving a small car and not my truck, I'm limited for space. I will keep it down to my crop tote, my tool bag and the small Tonic trimmer.

The luxury of the trip will be that I'm taking a compact 4x6 photo printer, so we can print photos while we are there. During the week, I'll create pages and populate them with pictures taken during the week. Go me! MIL can create pages and populate them with whatever photos she wants.

I'll be cropping with my MIL, who has some tools and supplies, but I'm not at all sure just what she's got. Thank goodness, I long ago created a packing list for crops. All I have to do is follow my list and I know I won't forget anything.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

My World View

I'm participating in a photography 'Summer Camp' activity, where we are given a subject and about a week to go out and take photos. Then we post our photos on the forum. This week's challenge was clouds. Most of the photos are of blue sky and puffy, white clouds, usually with a bit of scenery in the background at the edges. It's summer, nobody wants to drag out a camera when it's raining. However, my photos were of a vivid sunset.



It's not your average mental image when the word 'clouds' is brought up. But it's closer to what I thought of when I thought about what clouds I wanted to take a picture of.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Sizing and Shopping

I got a set of templates from Birgit Kerr at Scrapbook Graphics to create folds in pieces of paper. I'd thought that they were all 12 x 12 templates. They are not. They will work as photo mattes, or as an additional layer on a layout. What I wanted was a set of 12 x 12 templates and I didn't get that.

I am annoyed at myself because the graphic for that set of templates clearly shows them at the correct size and scale. I was provided information that accurately described what I was buying and I didn't pay attention to it.

Other than that, I'm quite pleased with them. They are lots of fun and I'll be able to use them to add interest and complexity to my layouts, without too much fuss. Her instructions are simple and the files were neatly organized when I unzipped them. But I'm still shopping for a set of 12 x 12 folded paper templates.

Monday, July 13, 2009

When All Else Fails

I organize. I have no Mojo. I haven't really scrapped for a while. I've been shopping for kits that I think I'll use when I find my mojo again. While the mojo is missing, I can organize. I'm working in Bridge, tagging files and making sure that everything I own is filed correctly and not dropped into the wrong folders.

It will make my life easier because I'll be able to find my files quickly and I'll have a better idea of what I own. In the physical world, it's the same as having everything stored where you can scan through things quickly and find stuff. And also like the physical world, I'm finding things that I'd forgotten I had.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Collaboration Kits

OK, I admit it, I like Flergs. I also like MGL Scraps. I've got a link to Monica's CT (Creative Team) Blog over on the left. Flergs' blog isn't quite my thing, but she does have a lot of fun stuff on there. Anyway, they did a collab kit called What Dreams May Come which was mentioned in the MGL CT blog and I thought it looked like a lot of fun.

Why is it that collab kits get a little confuzzled in the zipping? There are elements divided into parts a, b and c. Inside part b is part a from Monica. Inside part c is part b from Monica. OK, I can sort of understand that. But inside the zip file for shadowed elements I find Monica's elements b again. They are in the kit twice.

Do I really care? No. The kit is pretty cute and I'm hoping to be able to do some fun things with it.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

They Come, They Go

I was looking through the gallery of a major scrapping site hoping for some inspiration. Found it! Checked the credits, I've got a designer name and the name of a kit. I did a quick search. A year ago, she was designing kits for sale. Today she is not. Like many digital designers, she got started and then she stopped. Her kits are unavailable.

This is another of the problems with digital. Many of the designers and webstores are not in it for the long term. A few friends get together and put up a webstore. Something happens, be it a baby or a spat, or just the demands of life, and there is no more site. Putting a lot of effort into putting up a website is very different from being effective at putting up a website. Putting together kits that sell is a skill that not everyone has. Not kit after kit, month after month.

I'm hoping that the designer I failed to find tonight had a happy attack of life and moved on to different challenges.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Not Even if it Were Free!

On the OScraps shopping site, there is a blinking ad at the bottom of EVERY SINGLE PAGE ON THE ENTIRE WEBSITE!!!! Yes, I'm shouting. I hate blinking ads that much. The ad is for a bunch of papers, in assorted colors. It would be a decent bargain if I didn't already know a lot about creating my own papers. I'm not at all interested.

I really hate that ad. It makes me not want to shop that website, and there are some good things at OScraps. I'd been waiting for the ad to go away before I spent any money there, but I just had to have an element set from Holliewood Studios. I also wanted a few templates for curled corners. There was no blinking ad in the payment section. Whew! I thought I was done with it.

When I went to open the page for each download, there it was! Hello? Why is there an ad for anything on a download page? I've seen it many times before and I didn't want it. I'm not suddenly going to go back and add that piece of annoyance to my order at this point!

I hate that ad so much that unless there is a miracle and the ad goes away, I won't shop at OScraps again.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

One Step Forward...

I have gotten photos from the one month long trip to Australia into a photo album that I got yesterday. One trip = one album. I'm going to need to get more albums. At least they aren't horribly expensive. I wanted to get started putting photos into albums, so I could make a guess as to how many more albums I'd need. Lots.

I have as many photos as I was afraid I had. I also did a bit of pre-sorting of other photos. That will help speed up later attacks on the photo stash. I am more determined than ever not to scrap the entire collection. At least I can see progress for my work so far.

Early to Rise

The problem with being early to rise is that nobody has updated their blog yet. I'm reduced to reading the news while drinking my coffee. I'm guilty of not updating as often as I'd like to, but I also don't want to update with nothing.

I've been thinking about how I want to sort out the photos to put them into albums. I'm a timeline kind of person, so they will go in chronological order. My fear is finding more photos from some early time long after I've put them all into the albums and I won't be able to fit them where they belong. Three ring binder albums have their advantages. These were cheap. That was their advantage.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

UnFail!!!

I got two layouts done and am thinking about what to do to embellish two more. The second two will finish off 2006 photos for the Photo Carousel! 2008 is all done and I need to do 2007 and part of 2009 still. I'm claiming half done with the Carousel. I'm glad I can claim progress after a month of nothing.

While I was doing the think about embellishments thing, I made a COSTCO run. I'm usually very good about making a list and sticking to the list. But I splurged on something that I knew I wanted and I found at a good price. I got four photo albums (that all match!) and hold 300 4 x 6 photos each, for a total storage for 1,200 photos! I might need to run out and get two more, but at least, I'll have the project well started. To force myself to make sure that I have enough storage space, I'm going to quickly go through and count up photos... Ha! Quickly. As if...

A Case of Fail

Nope, nothing scrapped yesterday. I tried. I looked at stuff, I sorted stuff, but the mojo, she is not there. I got two boxes of old photos put into good photo storage boxes. I got my regular computer backup done. I burned a DVD and cataloged the files I've got stored on it. I cleaned out old files on the laptop. I sorted through and tagged files in Bridge. I dealt with many things that were creating clutter and chaos, but I did not create a layout.

Hope springs eternal and I will try again today.

Monday, July 6, 2009

How Long Has It Been?

I haven't scrapped in a while. Not digital, not paper. I've not felt like it. The last layout I did was a digital layout that I printed out at 8" x 8" to put on the calendar for June and I did that on the last day of May.

I've had a paper layout on my worktable for weeks now. It's planned, supplies have been pulled and I have not gotten around to putting it together. Because it is for the photo carousel, it isn't even a large layout, or a complex one. It won't take me long to put it together.

Success breeds more success. Once I get started, I'll be motivated to keep going. I just can't seem to get started. I'm working on it, though.

Friday, July 3, 2009

That's Not Gonna' Work....

I believe that the digital scrapping world does two things wrong. First, designers as a group give too much stuff away for free. Second, there are too many free tutorials that are excellent and cover the basics and beyond.

Remember what your mother used to say about buying cows when milk is free? When there are lots of freebies out there, it makes it hard for someone who is trying to sell a product to convince a potential customer that their product is worth paying money for. Especially when it isn't any better than the free stuff. Sometimes it's last month's free stuff.

The designers I buy from have very few freebies available and there are no good, free Photoshop reference books. They don't give away the milk, I'm willing to buy a cow. I'll buy on sale, I'll use coupons, but I'll buy. I'll buy because it is more convenient than waiting to find a freebie. I'll buy because I know it will never be a freebie. I'll buy because I saw it in a gallery and fell in love with it. But I don't ever buy because I got a freebie from them.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Photographic Thinking

My husband has trouble taking what he calls random photos. Hubby needs an event to take a picture and he will press the shutter once and consider the event documented. A single photo of the tree would be Christmas for him. One shot of blowing out candles is enough for a birthday. The few photos he takes are often badly exposed and out of focus.

I love him dearly, but he doesn't think like a photographer. I take more than one photo at events and I take random photos of things happening in our lives. Things like cooking dinner or playing on a laptop. I've got photos of us cleaning carpets.

Taking random photos allows me to practice so that when an event does come along, I won't have bad pictures. If the carpet cleaning photos are overexposed, it really doesn't matter that much. If I miss that photo of him in Disney World dancing with Goofy, I would be quite upset.